Question

In vim, if you set incsearch then it will scroll to the next match of your current search term without moving the cursor. I often use this to read a section of code without moving the cursor there, because I can then hit <ESC> and the screen will return back to wherever my cursor was when I started searching.

However, vim has a pause after you hit <ESC>, and before it scrolls back to the cursor. I find this pause very irritating. What is the purpose behind this pause, and/or is this pause configurable?

Answer 1

I’m assuming you’re running Vim in a terminal. <Esc> is the beginning character of many terminal escape sequences, such as cursor movement or Alt/Meta + other keys. If you’ve defined some alt/meta key mappings somewhere in your config, Vim waits a bit after you hit Esc to make sure the <Esc> character isn’t the start of a longer sequence.

You’ll probably want to check :help 'timeout' and adjust settings accordingly. You can set timeoutlen to a shorter duration if desired (ttimeoutlen is by default set to -1, so it isn’t used).

EDIT: If you’re running Vim in tmux or GNU screen, this probably won’t be enough to prevent the pause. If using tmux, try adding set -s escape-time 0 to your .tmux.conf, as suggested by Vicent Marti here. If using GNU screen, you may have success with adding

maptimeout 0
defc1 off

to your .screenrc, as suggested by brian_ruiz here.